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Brightspace exam guide for Instructors

Brightspace exam guide for Instructors

D2L Brightspace offers several methods of delivering final exams, both with built-in tools or integrated applications. Exam tools can include an online (digital) and/or paper-based approach, and you can select the option(s) that best suit your assessment.

In this resource, you will find a collection of resources for creating up your exams using these digital tools.

Not sure where to start?

If you are unsure about which assessment tool to use for your exam, please contact TMU's Brightspace Instructor Support Team at courses@torontomu.ca.

Getting Started: Choose your exam tool

Depending on the type of exam that you are planning to run and how you are delivering it, your tool options will vary. Important considerations when selecting the tool that best suits your exam are listed in the Exam Tool Options table (below).

Some types of exams can be delivered using more than one of the tools offered at TMU; this guide recommends the most commonly used tool for each style of exam, with an additional comparison between similar options when available.  

Exam Options Akindi bubble sheets  Crowdmark Handwritten Brightspace Quizzes Brightspace Assignments
 Primary Function Paper multiple-choice (bubble sheet) assessments Digital grading of paper assessments Online quiz-based exams, with varied question types Student file submissions
Exam Delivery On Paper On Paper Digitally Digitally
In-person or Remote In Person In Person
  • Remote 
  • In person using TMU lab computers or personal devices
  • Remote 
  • In person using TMU lab computers or personal devices
Question Types
  • Multiple Choice
  • Multi-Select
  • Multiple scoring options
  • Written Response 
  • Labelling images
  • Showing calculations
  • Writing paragraphs
  • Multiple choice (bubble sheet)
  • Multiple choice
  • Written Response (of varying lengths, sentences to multi-paragraph)
  • True/false
  • Fill-in-the-blanks
  • Arithmetic
  • Many other options
File upload
Auto-Grading Yes Only multiple choice  Yes, based on question type  No
Multiple Version Yes; Up to 6 separate versions No; separate assessments required. Yes; Automatic shuffling and random selections from pools of questions No
Open or Closed Book Determined by in-person invigilation  Determined by in-person invigilation  Determined by quiz settings or in person invigilation 

Open book

Turnitin Originality Check compatible

Paper: Bubble sheet exam (Akindi)

Getting Started: Akindi bubble sheet exams

Akindi bubble sheet exams are a digital alternative to Scantron that auto-grade multiple-choice bubble sheet assessments.

Akindi is accessed through your Brightspace course, and can sync exam scores to your Brightspace Grades tool. 

As Akindi bubble sheet exams are delivered in-person, before the exam you will need to create the response sheets. 

Before the exam, you should: 

  1. Create the Akindi Assignment via Brightspace
  2. Fill the Answer Key (optional; this can be completed at a later date)
  3. Print the student response sheets yourself, or order them from TMU’s Duplicating and Printing Services

Resources to share with students before an Akindi bubble sheet exam

There are no digital components to the student’s exam attempt. 

Please ask them to come to the exam prepared with their TMU OneCard, and a dark writing utensil (pencil recommended, but not required).

In-exam, remind them to specify their version (if relevant), and to fill their student ID number accurately using the appropriate bubbles on the sheet.

 Time-Based Accommodations

As this assessment is completed on paper, the timing is not managed by the tool, but through the facilitation of the exam. 
 

 Make-up Test or Rewrites in the Test Centre

For students writing bubble-sheet exams in the Test Centre, a course instructor must upload the scan of the completed exam sheets into the Akindi Dashboard themselves.
 
Note for Make-up Exams: If a second answer sheet is uploaded for a student, it will overwrite the earlier submission and automatically be scored towards the connected grade item.
 
Duplicating and Printing Services will not be able to scan exams completed in the Test Centre, as they provide students with generic bubble sheets, which are not associated with a specific course and assessment. Before the exam, please share the format selected for the exam with the Test Centre, including:
  • the number of questions (50 - 150) 
  • the number of possible answers (A-E or A-J)

This will allow the Test Centre to provide students with a blank bubble sheet that best matches the exam.

Once the exam is completed,

  1. Collect an envelope of the filled response sheets from the Test Centre. 
  2. Scan them as a PDF. 
  3. A course instructor must upload the completed exam sheets into the Akindi Dashboard (see Option 2 in the Scanning Completed Tests resource below). 

After the exam has been completed, scan the filled bubble-response sheets – either by scanning them yourself, or returning them to the Duplicating and Printing Services (DPS) location at 105 Bond Street. If scanned by DPS, you will receive an email when the results are ready to be viewed online. 

Note: If a student recorded their responses on a generic sheet provided by The Test Centre, it cannot be scanned by DPS. Please scan and upload these sheets yourself, as described in TMU’s Akindi Scanning Resource.

Once scanned, the bubble-response sheets will be auto-graded and allocated to individual students in the online system. Review the grading, making adjustments as needed, then sync the scores to your Brightspace Grades tool.

As Akindi bubble sheets provide the most commonly desired features at TMU, they are the primary recommendation for standalone bubble sheet assessments. 

Please note that other tools are available to you, which also offer automatically graded on-paper bubble sheets as part of the assessment. If you are not sure which tool would best suit your exam, please consider your options using the comparison guide below.

 

Akindi Paper Assessment

Crowdmark Paper Assessment Scantron

Recommended Use

On-paper and hybrid bubble sheet assessments

Multiple question type assessments, including multiple choice questions No longer available; previously used for bubble sheet assessments

Printing Sheets

Regular A4 letter size sheets

Regular A4 letter size sheets Proprietary Scantron sheets

Printing and Scanning

Any consumer printer/scanner; can be done by Bond Street Printshop or independently

Any consumer printer/scanner; can be done by RICOH or independently


Proprietary printer/scanner available only at Bond Street Printshop

Pre-filled student information on sheets 


No

Question types

Multiple Choice and Multi-Answer, T/F

Max. of 50 or 150 questions

Answer options: A-E or A-J

Multiple Choice, Handwritten Response

Max. of 100 or 200 MC questions

Answer options: A-E

Multiple Choice, T/F; no multi-answer

Max. of  215 questions

Answer options: A-E

Results

Available online in the Akindi Dashboard, including the scanned bubblesheets

Available online in Crowdmark, including the scanned response sheets .CSV file emailed to you

Advanced marking

Partial marks

Varied point values

Exact selection only

Multiple answer selection

Either/or (multiple correct choices)

Auto-marking for bubble sheet responses, including: 

Select one correct answer

Select all correct answers

No

Answer Key Creation

Uploaded from .docx file

Manual selection (online)

Upload completed bubble sheet

Copy/paste

Manual selection (online)

Use a bubblesheet and fill in the answer key. 

Put this at the top of the other bubblesheets for scanning.

Can edit answer key after completion 

Yes; automatically re-grades all students

Yes; automatically re-grades all responses No

Auto-export scores to Brightspace Grades

No

(manual CSV file upload to D2L Grades)

Automated response analysis 

Excel files emailed to instructor

Multiple versions of assessment

No No

Paper: Handwritten response (Crowdmark)

Crowdmark Administered Assessments (handwritten) exams

Crowdmark Administered Assessments (handwrritten) exams allow you to digitally grade on-paper assessments as an individual or shared among multiple graders. 

Crowdmark is accessed through your Brightspace course, and can sync exam scores to your Brightspace Grades tool. 

As Crowdmark Administered (on-paper) exams are delivered in-person, before the exam the question sheets must be created and printed.

Prior to the exam, you should: 

  1. Create your Assignment Template and upload it to Crowdmark
  2. Download your booklets, and print them yourself or using RICOH
  3. Digitally label your questions in Crowdmark

Resources to share with students before a Crowdmark Administered exam

 

There are no digital components to the student’s exam attempt. 

Please ask them to come to the exam prepared with their TMU OneCard, and a dark writing utensil (pencil recommended, but not required).

As this assessment is completed on paper, the timing is not managed by the tool, but through the facilitation of the exam.

 

If students are completing a separate makeup exam (with different questions), you will be required to create a separate Crowdmark Assignment and print a new question sheet for these students.

After the exam has been completed, scan the filled response sheets – either by scanning them yourself, or returning them to RICOH. 

Within the Crowdmark system, then “match” the scanned sheets to the students, as described in TMU’s Crowdmark Exam Matching resource.

Once Matched, you and your team of graders can divide the work, provide numeric and written feedback, then sync the scores to your Brightspace Grades tool. Optionally, you can also distribute the feedback directly to students through Crowdmark.

Online: Quiz (Brightspace Quiz)

D2L Brightspace

Getting Started: Set up your Brightspace Quizzes

The Quizzes tool in D2L Brightspace allows you to deliver online tests and activities.

The additional considerations below may be beneficial when setting up a quiz to be used in an exam, or can act as a checklist of options to review after completing your setup. 

 Synchronous vs Asynchronous Quiz Start 

By default, Brightspace Quizzes are asynchronous: students can start at any time in the window of availability, and will be able to answer questions until their personal timer ends. Learn more about asynchronous quiz settings at the Controlling access to Asynchronous Quizzes resource. 

In Brightspace, Synchronous Quizzes are a newer feature. When set to Synchronous, the quiz timer begins for all students at once, and ends for them at the same time (unless they have a time-based accommodation). Learn more about enabling synchronous quiz settings at the Create a Synchronous Quiz resource.

 Encourage Academic Integrity through question delivery

Brightspace Quizzes include several features that you can implement to encourage academic integrity, including ways to organize and randomize questions and answers.

Randomizing and pooling questions has proven to be effective, as each student will see an individualized set of questions in a unique order. You can also randomize the answers to questions, for example, by shuffling the order of multiple choice answer options, or by allowing D2L to generate a random set of variables for math questions.

 Respondus Lockdown Browser (available by request)

In Person Exams: Respondus LockDown Browser can be used in supervised exam environments to “lock” students into the Brightspace quiz on their exam device.

Remote Exams: Respondus LockDown Browser + Monitor is the only approved tool for virtual proctoring at TMU.
Please avoid using the synchronous quiz feature when Respondus Lockdown Browser + Monitor is enabled on a quiz, as it can impact the amount of time each student has to complete their exam. 

Note: Respondus LockDown Browser (without use of webcam monitoring) is not recommended outside of a proctored lab environment, and Zoom is not recommended for virtual proctoring.

Double check dates and times

From the list of Quizzes you can easily confirm the availability window of the quiz. This will be the window of time that students can click to enter the quiz.

If the date and time are not correct 
  1. Click the drop-down arrow beside the Quiz name, and select Edit 
  2. Expand the Availability Dates & Conditions panel, and update as needed.  

Confirm Quiz Visibility

Making Brightspace quizzes visible to students

From the list of Quizzes look for the Hidden from Users icon: an eye with a slash through it. 

If this icon is beside the name of a quiz, students will not be able to see it, even on the start date. 

To make the quiz visible to students:

  1. Click the drop-down arrow beside the name
  2. Select "Make visible to users"
If the students cannot see the exam listed during the exam

We don't recommend setting a narrow availability window (e.g., 9:00-9:15 for a 3-hour exam) as some students may experience technical issues that result in a temporary loss of access to the exam.

As such, this may lead to you receiving urgent requests from students needing assistance with re-entry into the exam.

Optional: Password Restriction

Enabling a password on an exam, as indicated by the upside-down key icon next to the assignment’s name, is an optional quiz setting primarily used when running assessments in lab environments.

In the Availability Dates & Conditions panel, you can enable or remove a password for the quiz.

Note: If you are running your exam remotely, setting a password for all students will not further restrict access or provide additional security to your online remote quizzes, as the password has to be distributed. Please consider using one of the options below instead.

Other methods of limiting access to Brightspace Quizzes
  • Limit a quiz to a specific section
    Release conditions are tools that allow you to restrict access to certain elements of your course (content, announcements, quizzes, assignments, grades, etc.) by specific criteria, including section enrollment.
  • Limit a quiz to specific students
    Adding some students to Special Access with the "Allow only users with special access to see this quiz" setting. 

Enable Special Access

The "Special Access" setting enables you to allow individual students different rules for the completion of their quiz. This is invaluable in providing time-based accommodations, alternate start/end times, or multiple attempts at quizzes. 

The Manage Special Access settings can be found in the Availability Dates & Conditions panel of the quiz editor. 

Note: It is recommended that you completely set up the quiz settings before adding students to Special Access, as later overall changes may not impact the listed students.

Reviewing your quiz's Special Access settings

When reviewing the Special Access settings, the Time Limit setting below their name identifies if a student has been provided with a different quiz timer, using the Special Access option. 

If it is not listed, only the availability has been changed. In this case, the student will not receive additional time to complete their exam. 

If this is the case:

  • Click the pencil icon beside their name to modify their settings. 
  • Set an Enforced Time Limit that will apply to just this student, reflecting the total amount of time available (original assessment + additional time). 
  • Ensure the End Date in Special Access includes the additional time provided. 

Note: Accommodations allocated through the Classlist tool are not represented in this view.

Classlist Accommodation Settings

You may apply Special Access for students who already have accommodations set through the class list – the Special Access setting will override the accommodation.

When setting "Special Access" on a specific quiz, the list of students in the Special Access interface will not only show an icon to indicate that accommodations have been set in the classlist, but will also include the details of the accommodation.

  Provide a practice test

If the students are expected to complete the exam on their own device, please provide them with the opportunity to take an ungraded practice quiz. It should require the same tools and settings before taking a graded exam.

  • Provide unlimited attempts or submissions
  • Make the window of availability end before the start of the exam
  • Remind students of the practice, and ask them to report any unexpected issues to you

 

 Establish a method of contact during an online remote exam

As most exam-related issues must be resolved by the faculty member, contract lecturer or TA, the Brightspace Instructor Support team will work with you to troubleshoot the issue and advise on next steps. 

Please be sure you are monitoring your university email inbox regularly during the exam time.

Some instructors (depending on class size) have found it helpful to set up an optional drop-in Zoom meeting that runs throughout the exam. Students who have concerns or questions about the exam in progress can join to ask their instructor or TAs for non-technical support. 

 

 Share the student guide to exams

A resource has been created to support students as they prepare for exams. Please share it with your students, along with any information that is relevant to the exam you will be running. 
 
This includes: 
  • The date and time of the exam
  • The tools that will be used for the assessment
  • Any additional equipment that will be required

After the student's work has been submitted, you can view, grade, and provide feedback using the Brightspace Quizzes tool.

 

Depending on the types of questions in your quiz, some may be auto-graded, while others require manual scoring.

 

To learn more, visit the Brightspace Quiz Grading resource

As Brightspace Quizzes are most commonly used at TMU, they are the primary focus of this resource. 

Other online quiz tools are available to you, which also offer options to run online exams that can be administered in-person or remotely. Each has different features, which may benefit your exam. If you are not sure which tool would best suit your exam, please consider your options using the comparison guide below.

Online Quiz Tool Comparison Guide:

 

Brightspace Quizzes

Akindi Online Assessment Crowdmark Online Assessments

Recommended Use

Quizzes with pooled or varied question types

Multiple choice quizzes with a fixed end time; hybrid quizzes Remote open book assessments, with multiple question types

Question types

Variety, including Multiple Choice, Written Response. Learn more about Brightspace Quiz Questions.

Multiple Choice, Multi-Answer Variety, including Multiple Choice, File Upload, Written Response. 

Hard deadline for submissions

Accommodations can be individually set

✓ 

Easily import questions from .docx or PDF file

No

✓  No, but documents can be distributed as questions

One-step fix of incorrect questions

No

✓ 

Automated response analysis 

No

✓ 

Automated Virtual Proctoring Available

No No

Randomly selected questions from pools 

No

Shuffle questions

Within sections or across entire quiz

Across entire quiz Within randomized pools

Prevent backtracking

Can be set for one question or any page break

One question at a time No

Multiple versions of quiz

Assigned based on group or section enrollment

No Manually assigned

Online: File upload (Brightspace Assignment)

Getting Started: Set up your Brightspace Assignment

The Assignments tool in D2L Brightspace allows you to set up a place for students to submit their assignments digitally.

The additional considerations below may be beneficial when setting up an Assignment to be used in an exam, or can act as a checklist of options to review after completing your setup. 

If desired, enable Turnitin Similarity Checking

At TMU, Turnitin Originality can be used through the Assignments tool.

After submission, the reports and at-a-glance similarity score can then be accessed directly from the D2L Brightspace Assignment submission list.

Add a file to the Assignment Description

This optional feature allows you to distribute an assessment template, relevant resources, or question sheet for students to download when they begin the exam.

 

Set Start Date and End Date to align with your exam time

In the Availability Dates & Conditions panel, you can set the dates and times that the students’ access to the assignment will begin and end. 

Ensure that your “Before Start:” availability setting is set to either: 

  • Visible with access restricted (default) - Prior to the start date/time, students can see the name of the assignment, and the availability dates, but cannot click on it.
  • Hidden - Prior to the start date/time, students cannot see or click on the assignment.

Double check dates and times

From the list of Assignments you can easily confirm the availability window. This will be the window of time that students can click to enter the Assignment page, to read the instructions or upload their work.

Note: If your Exam was copied from a previous course, double-check that the year has been updated.

Confirm Assignment Visibility

From the list of Assignments look for the Hidden from Users icon: an eye with a slash through it. 

If this icon is beside the name of the assignment, students will not be able to see it. 

To make the assessment visible to students:

  1. Click the drop-down arrow beside the name
  2. Select "Make visible to users"

If the Assignment is visible and students cannot see the exam listed during the exam:

  • Check the Start and End Dates (described above)
  • Check the Special Access settings (described below)

Brightspace Assignment Accommodations

Enable Special Access

You can change the start, due, and end date of a particular assignment for students who require:

  • Additional time
  • A different window of submission.

To add individual accommodations, click on Manage Special Access in the Availability Dates & Conditions panel. 

Note: It is recommended that you complete configuring the Assignment settings options before adding students to Special Access, as later overall changes may not impact the listed students.

Confirm that all Special Access settings accurate

Double check that the Special Access settings are as expected, in the Availability Dates & Conditions panel. 

Confirm that the correct number of students is listed, and that the access settings are as expected. 

The two possible options are: 

  • Allow users with special access to submit outside the normal availability dates for this folderThis allows the listed students to have a different window of access. 
  • Allow only users with special access to see this folder. This restricts the assignment to only the listed users. All other students will be blocked from accessing it, and can be beneficial when running a makeup exam.

Brightspace Assignment Makeup Exams

As the Brightspace Assignment is primarily used as a method of file upload, you can allow students to re-submit or submit at a different date to the same assignment. This is beneficial as it will simplify your gradebook and final grade calculations. 

To facilitate this:

  • In the Availability Dates & Conditions panel, use the Special Access settings to adjust the window of availability for specific students
  • In the Submission and Completion Settings panel, ensure that “All submissions are kept” 

 Provide a practice Assignment

If the students have not previously used the Assignment tool in your course, encourage them to try uploading a file to a sample assignment, as they will during the graded exam.

  • End the sample assignment's window of availability before the real exam begins, to reduce potential confusion
  • Remind students of the practice, and ask them to report any unexpected issues to you

 

 Establish a method of contact during an online remote exam

As most exam-related issues must be resolved by the faculty member, contract lecturer or TA, the Brightspace Instructor Support team will work with you to troubleshoot the issue and advise on next steps. 

Please be sure you are monitoring your university email inbox regularly during the exam time.

Some instructors (depending on class size) have found it helpful to set up an optional drop-in Zoom meeting that runs throughout the exam. Students who have concerns or questions about the exam in progress can join to ask their instructor or TAs for non-technical support.

 

 Share the student guide to exams

A resource has been created to support students as they prepare for exams. Please share it with your students, along with any information that is relevant to the exam you will be running. 

This includes: 

  • The date and time of the exam
  • The tools that will be used for the assessment
  • Any additional equipment that will be required

After student work has been submitted, you can view, grade, and provide feedback directly in the Brightspace Assignments tool.

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